Amenhotep I (1525-1504 B.C.)

According to all appearances, Amenhotep, “the Ammonish’ at the death of his brave father was a child under age, so that his mother, Nofertari, was obliged to assume the guardianship of him, both in the palace and in the empire. When he grew up the young Pharaoh directed his views towards the south, the ancient boundary of which his deceased father had taken pains to fix anew to the advantage of the Egyptian empire. His campaign against the land of Kush, in which the brave warrior Ahmose, the son of Abana, took part in the special employment of captain of the royal ship, had for its object to go beyond the country which his father had re-conquered; “to extend the boundaries of Egypt”. He completely succeeded in his arms, and besides brought home a rich booty in captive negroes and cattle.

King Amenhotep I

A second campaign, for the knowledge of which we are indebted to the inscriptions in the tomb of the other Ahmose with the surname of Pen-Nukheb,1 was directed against the north, where the Libyan people of the Amoo-Kahak had shown themselves hostilely inclined towards the Egyptians. Its result once more appears 500 years later on the tablets of victory of Egyptian history under the abbreviated form Kahak. This people belonged to the great tribe of the “light colored” Thuhen, or, as Greeks designated them in an equally remarkable expression, the Marmarides, whose country in the times of the Greeks and Eomans was known under the name of Marmarica. At that time they inhabited the northern coast of the African continent, to the west of the Egyptian Netherlands. The Greek geographers seem to have well known the old name of Amoo-Kahak, at least Ptolemy mentions the Jobakchoi2 as a tribe in the interior country whose seats lay in the region of the Desert of the Oasis of Jupiter Amon, by the side of the Anagombroi and the Kuaditai. With this mention of the Amoo-Kahak we may remark the first traces of Libyan enmity, which under Mineptah I. assumed such a threatening appearance for the Egyptians, while before that time they seldom gave the Pharaohs the opportunity of extending their campaigns to the western country. However, the Na-Pa-Thuhen or Na-Pa-Thuhi “those from the land of Thuhi” (an expression which is found in the inscriptions, and was the origin of the construction of the name of Naphtuhim in Holy Scripture), considered themselves as of the same race and as cousins of the Egyptians. In Sais, the mysterious seat of Nit, the mother of the gods, armed with bow and arrow, the Egyptian Athene, they worshipped, like the inhabitants of the land, this goddess, whose name they were accustomed to etch into the skin of their bodies. We will take the opportunity later on, in speaking of the twenty-sixth dynasty, to notice the influence which the Marmarides once exercised on the fate of Egypt.

Towards the East Amenhotep I. remained quiet. Like his predecessors he contented himself with protecting his frontiers. In the interior of the country the inscriptions bear witness to his care for building the great temple of the empire at Thebes, and individual places for the gods on the west side of the great Theban plain. After his death divine honors were accorded him.

He had by his consort Aahhotep a son, who was his heir and successor on the throne, and as such bore the name Thutmose I.

Bibleography:

- Ashton, Sally; and Spanel, Donald. "Portraiture," The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Ed. Donald Redford. Vol. 3, pp.55-59. Oxford University Press, 2001.

- Borchardt, Ludwig. Altägyptische Zeitmessung (Die Geschichte der Zeitmessung und der Uhren) I. Berlin and Leipzig, 1920.

- Aldred, Cyril. Egyptian Art. Thames and Hudson Ltd., London. 1980.

- v. Beckerath, Jürgen. Chronologie des Pharaonischen Ägypten. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1997.